Shortlist announced for 2018 International Hippocrates Young Poet Prize for Poetry and Medicine

With £500 for the Young Poets Award, the Hippocrates Young Poets Prize for Poetry and Medicine is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem by a young poet. The Young Poets award is for poets aged 14 to 18 years and is supported by healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust.

Patron Leslie Morgan OBE DL said: “We are very pleased that the Cardiovascular Research Trust is supporting the 2018 Young Poet Award in the Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine. This Young Poet Award is an excellent way to encourage young people from around the world to take an interest in their health through poetry and I am delighted that we shall continue our support for this major award in 2019 and 2020.”

Entries for the 2018 Hippocrates Young Poet Award were received from Canada, England, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Jamaica, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the USA.

The 2018 Hippocrates Young Poet Award is being judged by Toronto poet Alisha Kaplan who has shortlisted and commended the following 8 young poets from the USA and the UK. As for other Hippocrates Poetry Awards, judging for the Hippocrates Young Poet Award is anonymous. All a judge sees is the titles and texts of the poems.

Judge Alisha Kaplan said: “I am in awe of the clarity, wisdom, and resilience with which these young poets write. Weaving medical language with lyrical, they give raw, honest depictions of both physical and mental illness. These poems are written with the vision one can gain when malady or death enters and pervades one’s world, changing its colors, textures, tempo.”

She added: “There are many candid elegies to bodies transformed visibly or invisibly by illness, addressed to loved ones as well as to the poets’ own selves. At times whispering, at times keening, these voices face their pain and grief, and out of their suffering make something beautiful, something true.”

20 Reasons Why I Can’t Order in a Restaurant Miles Johnston McInerney, San Diego, California, USA

Case Study on Grief Vivian Lu, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, USA

In Quarantine Lara Wise, Oundle, Northamptonshire, England

Panic Attack as a House Fire in the City Sabina Holzman, Laguna Beach, California, USA

Passing Shannon Lin, Santa Clara, California, USA

Scale of Bone Density, Azure Taylor Fang, Logan, Utah, USA

The winning poems and commendations in Hippocrates Young Poets, Open and Health Professional Awards are published in the annual Hippocrates Prize Anthology. The 2018 Hippocrates Prize Anthology will be launched at the 2018 Hippocrates Awards ceremony at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago on Friday 11th May.

With a prize fund of £500 for the Young Poets Award and £5500 for winning poems in the Open and Health Professional categories, the Hippocrates Prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem.

Since it was launched in 2010, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted over 8000 entries from over 60 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and from Finland to Australasia.

Notes for editors
For photos of finalists, biographies and extracts of their poems, call 07494 450805 or email hippocrates.poetry@gmail.com

The Hippocrates Initiative – winner of the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Innovation and Excellence in the Arts – is an interdisciplinary venture that investigates the relationship between medicine and poetry.

The 2018 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize is supported by the Cardiovascular Research Trust, a healthy heart charity founded in 1996, which promotes research and education for the prevention and treatment of disorders of the heart and circulation. The charity has a particular interest in avoiding preventable heart disease through educating school students.